Since Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Wehrmacht had suffered catastrophic defeats at the hands of the Red Army, capped by the disastrous surrender of the Sixth Army in Stalingrad in the winter of 1943. This operation marked a definitive turning point in the war and ensured Britain control of the canal.īy the summer of 1943, Adolf Hitler desperately needed a victory on the Russian front. In pincer movements coordinated with Montgomery, Patton marched into Tunisia and clobbered the Afrikakorps and the Italian army, taking 230,000 German and Italian prisoners. In Patton, an aggressive strategist, Rommel met his match. A new American commander, General George Patton, was appointed. army rumbled toward Tunisia, the Afrikakorps laid an ambush, causing frightful casualties. Eventually, the Vichy governments in Algeria and Morocco surrendered and joined the Allied war effort.Īs the U.S. Much to the surprise of the Americans, the Vichy garrisons in Oran and Casablanca opened fire. vessels, carrying more than 100,000 troops, landed in Algeria and Morocco, in what would be the first amphibian invasion in modern history. Badly mauled, Rommel retreated to Tunisia.Īt that pivotal moment in November 1942, the United States launched Operation Torch, its first sustained combat mission of the war. Montgomery, equipped with 300 American Sherman tanks, attacked Rommel. Having fired his generals in North Africa, Churchill appointed Bernard Montgomery as commander of British forces there. President Franklin Roosevelt to send American troops to North Africa, but he demurred and sent fresh consignments of weapons instead. In desperation, Churchill pleaded with U.S. Rommel pushed headlong into Egypt and reached El Alamein, which was within striking distance of the canal. Tobruk fell and 30,000 Allied soldiers were taken prisoner. Rommel attacked again on and routed the Allies. The Afrikakorps pushed toward the canal, but was twice repulsed by Australian troops at Tobruk, near the Egyptian border. The Afrikakorps, as it would be known, was commanded by one of Adolf Hitler’s favorite generals, Erwin Rommel. Rushing to Italy’s aid, Germany dispatched 30,000 troops and a tank force to Libya. Fearing the French fleet in Mers el-Kabir would fall into German hands, the British Navy bombarded it, killing 1,300 sailors.Īs the Italian army in Libya headed toward the canal, Britain launched a counter-offensive, pushing the Italians back. The story starts in the French colony of Algeria. Germany’s losses were tremendous, with U-boat crews suffering the highest death rate of all German forces. From that point forward, the Allies successfully homed in on German submarines in the mid-Atlantic. This discovery changed the course of the war in the Atlantic. In May 1941, the British fortuitously found an Enigma machine aboard a scuttled German U-boat. He also requested help from allies such as Canada and the United States. He ordered decoders at the Bletchley Park compound to decipher German submarine messages, which were relayed by the Enigma machine. In the first seven months of the war, they sank hundreds of Allied ships.īritish Prime Minister Winston Churchill was very worried by the U-boat peril. Germany reacted by forming “wolf packs” of U-boats to hunt down convoys. In response to German aggression, Britain created the convoy system, deploying destroyers to protect merchants ships. Britain was dependent on these ships to deliver 70 percent of its food supplies. The Nazi regime then declared war on British merchant and military vessels plying the Atlantic. He later admitted he had mistakenly identified it as a warship.īritain proceeded to impose a naval blockade on Germany, prompting German submarines to attack the British fleet at Scapa Flow in Scotland. His flagrant lie was exposed by one of the officers of the German U-boat that targeted the SS Athena. Germany’s propaganda minister, Josef Goebbels, ludicrously claimed that Britain had deliberately struck the vessel to make his country look bad. Among the passengers who lost their lives were Jewish refugees fleeing Europe and American tourists. On September 3, 1939, a German submarine sunk the SS Athena, claiming the first victims of the war, as The Battle of the Atlantic states in its opening minutes.
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